Organization Theory

CONTEXTUALIZING MANAGEMENT AND BUSINESS THEORIES FOR AFRICA

Term Paper

Organizational Theory
MOI UNIVERSITY – NAIROBI CAMPUS

Presented to : Dr. Komen
Presented By: Mohammed Shakeel Salyani SBE/D/101/12

Table of Contents
1. The issue of the applicability of extant theories of management and business to the African context. 2
2. The underlying assumptions and prescriptions of dominant management theories and to what extent are they relevant to African challenges and issues 3
3. Re conceptualizing dominant theories for the African Context 4
4. The consequences of hegemonic management and business knowledge for the African Scholar 7
5. Indigenous African and management and business practices used to enhance our theoretical understandings 8
6. The possibilities of knowledge production from Africa informing extant management and business knowledge 11
7. Demystifying the myths about Africa 13
8. Literature review 15

1. The issue of the applicability of extant theories of management and business to the African context. Theory, in its conceptualisation, can be defined as a systematic collection of related principles, and Management theory as a way of categorising pertinent management knowledge (Inyang, 2007). Management theory is also a combination of the concepts and principles of management (Nwachukwu, 1992).

It is argued in literature that Management, as a human responsibility and a process that drives economic development and activities, is as old as human civilization or history. It is, therefore, noteworthy that Africa as part of the global community had existed in her own unique ways and unique cultures and managed the environment throughout history.

It is on record that the quiet of this environment was however, extensively disrupted in the 19th century when the Europeans scrambled for and partitioned Africa. This marked the beginning of colonialism in Africa where the people’s thought processes and cultures were altered through western “civilization” influences. African management thought was a major culprit of these western influences(Inyang, 2007).

The contribution of culture as a main driver of application of management theories in Nigeria can be found in the study by Akporherhe (2002) which suggests that culture is the acquired knowledge that people use to interpret experience and to generate social behaviour. Culture is learned through education, socialisation and experience and passed from one generation to another; therefore it can be said to be enduring. Oghojafor, George and Owoyemi (2012) also define culture as the way of life of a set of people.

Hofstede (1980) defines culture as the pattern, ways of thinking, feeling and reacting, acquired and communicated mainly by symbols, amounting to the distinctive achievements of human groups, including their embodiments in artifacts; the essential core of culture consists of traditional (i.e. historically derived and selected) ideas and especially their attached values.

In Barbara Kellerman’s book Bad Leadership. She defines a rigid leader as: “Although they may be competent, they are unable or unwilling to adapt to new ideas, new information, or changing times” (Kellerman, 2004: 41). Soin the same context African leaders tend not to adapt to new changes or the willing ness to give way to change and innovation.

Moreover most text and literature used in Africa for education is mainly originated from the west and the authenticity of the African context is hardly felt even during the learning process in every aspect of education. Theories generally originate from the west and push themselves to be operationalised in Africa when the African context has not been experienced or contributed to the same theory.

2. The underlying assumptions and prescriptions of dominant management theories and to what extent are they relevant to African challenges and issues

Goshal (2005) argues that academic research related to the conduct of business and management has had some very significant and negative influences on the practice of management. These influences have been less at the level of adoption of a particular theory and more at the incorporation, within the worldview of managers, of a set of ideas and assumptions that have come to dominate much of management research.

At the same time, a particular ideology has increasingly penetrated most of the disciplines in which management theories are rooted. Described by Milton Friedman (2002) as “liberalism,” this ideology is essentially grounded in a set of pessimistic assumptions about both individuals and institutions— a “gloomy vision” (Hirschman, 1970) that views the primary purpose of social theory as one of solving the “negative problem” of restricting the social costs arising from human imperfections.

Combined with the pretense of knowledge, this ideology has led management research increasingly in the direction of making excessive truthclaims based on partial analysis and both unrealistic and biased assumptions.

For example to make the model yield a solution, some more assumptions have to be made. So, the theory assumes that labor markets are perfectly efficient—in other words, the wages of every employee fully represent the value of his or her contributions to the company and, if they didn’t, the employee could immediately and costlessly move to another job. With this assumption, the shareholders can be assumed as carrying the greater risk, thus making their contribution of capital more important than the contribution of human capital provided by managers and other employees and, therefore, it is their returns that must be maximized (Jensen & Meckling, 1976).

Unrealistic assumptions and invalid prescriptions— yet, the theory and the dictum it leads to remain absolute. As Margaret Blair (1995) has shown, it is this theory, amplified by the power of institutional investors and their political and academic supporters, that influenced both regulatory changes and court decisions in the United States, ultimately yielding to the argument a level of legitimacy and certainty that few managers or academics now dare question.

3. Re conceptualizing dominant theories for the African Context

Amongst the common dominant theories utilized around the globe is the stake holder theory which I would like to ponder on in this paper. The stake holder theory has been moulded to accommodate many aspect of the organizations and the individuals or institutions around it. Various research has been done in different types of industries in respect to the theory. Since the span is large I will concentrate on a few to reflect on whether the same context does need conceptualizing or not.

The access to Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) in developing countries has gained significant importance in the recent years. However, the implementation of ICT has not worked flawlessly; in sub-Saharan Africa, many projects are not embraced by the target population and/or fail economically. The lack of stakeholder involvement on a community level and disregard of context and culture have been blamed for the failure of many ICT projects in sub-Saharan Africa.

Research on the relationship between stakeholder involvement and the ICT project in Macha, Zambia found that a thorough involvement of stakeholders on the community level resulted in a high community acceptance, higher awareness, and adoption of the ICT services in Macha. Further, it found that context and culture play a significant role and need to be taken into consideration when designing management and communication strategies for stakeholders.

In view of the same it is evident that in Africa the people are more emotionally driven and would like to be participative in the change proposed. However this is on the contrary with the leaders as stated by Nkomo That In an extensive review of extant leadership theory, House & Aditya (1997) reported 98 percent of leadership theory emanates from the United States and has been developed primarily by studying American leaders. Yet, leadership theory is largely represented as universal.

Minnick (1990) points to faulty generalisation or nonexclusive universalisation as a significant error in the production of knowledge. The error occurs when one group (American leaders) is studied but the knowledge generated then represents the whole concept— leadership. This point can be further illustrated by the use and non-use of prefixes. The prefix ‘American’ is suppressed when we speak of leadership theory, yet we find ourselves having to attach the prefix ‘African’ to any discussions of leadership in Africa.

“The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood,” wrote John Maynard Keynes (1953: 306). “Indeed the world is run by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. . . . It is ideas, not invested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil” Keynes (1953: 306).

This is precisely what has happened to management. Obsessed as they are with the “real world” and sceptical as most of them are of all theories, managers are no exception to the intellectual slavery of the “practical men” to which Keynes referred. Many of the worst excesses of recent management practices have their roots in a set of ideas that have emerged from business school academics over the last 30 years.

For the past decade or more stakeholder management theory (SHMT) has dominated the literature of business ethics. While the concepts of stake and stakeholder admit of both positive and normative connotations, in the field of business ethics SHMT is best characterized as a theory of corporate responsibility or a normative theory of the firm.

As normative concepts, stake and stakeholder are largely formal in character, allowing for a variety of substantial conceptions. Indeed, part of the popularity of SHMT is undoubtedly due to the fact that these concepts provide a very broad umbrella under which a range of normative positions can be accommodated. The primary concern underlying this paper is the theoretical adequacy of the normative positions that have been developed under the rubric of SHMT.

The adequacy of individual stakeholder management theories may be questioned on either of two basic grounds. First, they may be inadequately developed as a theory per se (i.e., they fail to address the full range of issues involved, do not provide adequate grounding for their position, etc.). Second, their problems may be linked not to the thoroughness of their inquiry, but rather to the adequacy of the tradition of normative theory (e.g., utilitarianism, Kantian deontology, etc.) on which they draw to develop their position.

In addressing these concerns about the adequacy of normative stakeholder theory, this paper undertakes two tasks simultaneously. On the one hand, it seeks to establish the basic requirements for a theoretically adequate approach to the normative analysis of stakeholder management. On the other hand, it attempts to sketch the outlines of a particular normative theory of stakeholder management that is able to fulfill these requirements.

In focusing on normative theory, the stake holder management theory in the African context is derived by the goal being to demonstrate how a critical theory approach brings two basic advantages to the analysis of SHMT. First, there is theoretical rigor which provides a firm basis for establishing both the validity and the scope of the normative responsibilities that management owes to stakeholders. Second, there is the conceptual clarity that critical theory affords stakeholder analysis. In particular, the distinction of three different normative realms provides the basis for clearly establishing who is a stakeholder, the nature of the responsibilities owed to stakeholders, the circumstances which can influence these responsibilities and how disputes involving conflicting stakes can be resolved.
4. The consequences of hegemonic management and business knowledge for the African Scholar

As has been extensively documented in the literature (e.g., Friga, Bettis, & Sullivan, 2003), over the last 50 years business school research has increasingly adopted the “scientific” model—an approach that Hayek (1989) described as “the pretense of knowledge.” This pretense has demanded theorizing based on partialization of analysis, the exclusion of any role for human intentionality or choice, and the use of sharp assumptions and deductive reasoning (Bailey & Ford, 1996). Since morality, or ethics, is inseparable from human intentionality, a precondition for making business studies a science has been the denial of any moral or ethical considerations in our theories and, therefore, in our prescriptions for management practice.

At the same time, a particular ideology has increasingly penetrated most of the disciplines in which management theories are rooted. Described by Milton Friedman (2002) as “liberalism,” this ideology is essentially grounded in a set of pessimistic assumptions about both individuals and institutions— a “gloomy vision” (Hirschman, 1970) that views the primary purpose of social theory as one of solving the “negative problem” of restricting the social costs arising from human imperfections. Combined with the pretense of knowledge, this ideology has led management research increasingly in the direction of making excessive truthclaims based on partial analysis and both unrealistic and biased assumptions.

Figure 1. process of bad theories destroying good practices

5. Indigenous African and management and business practices used to enhance our theoretical understandings

It is argued in literature that Management, as a human responsibility and a process that drives economic development and activities, is as old as human civilization or history. It is, therefore, noteworthy that Africa as part of the global community had existed in her own unique ways and unique cultures and managed the environment throughout history. It is on record that the quiet of this environment was however, extensively disrupted in the 19th century when the Europeans scrambled for and partitioned Africa.

This marked the beginning of colonialism in Africa where the people’s thought processes and cultures were altered through western “civilization” influences. African management thought was a major culprit of these western influences(Inyang, 2007).

As an illustration of the above claim, and as noted by Kiggundu (1991), it is acknowledged that during colonisation, the various colonial powers first destroyed or devalued local institutions and management practices, and then substituted them with their own colonial administrative systems out of the belief in Western cultural, biological and technological superiority over Africans.

While it can be noted that indigenous perspectives were ignored or denigrated, Dia (1996) argues that many Africa’s problems today are due to a structural and functional separation between informal, indigenous institutions rooted in Africa’s history and culture and formal institutions mostly transplanted from outside.

The contribution of culture as a main driver of application of management theories in Nigeria can be found in the study by Akporherhe (2002) which suggests that culture is the acquired knowledge that people use to interpret experience and to generate social behaviour. Culture is learned through education, socialisation and experience and passed from one generation to another; therefore it can be said to be enduring.

Oghojafor, George and Owoyemi (2012) also define culture as the way of life of a set of people. Hofstede (1980) defines culture as the pattern, ways of thinking, feeling and reacting, acquired and communicated mainly by symbols, amounting to the distinctive achievements of human groups, including their embodiments in artifacts; the essential core of culture consists of traditional (i.e. historically derived and selected) ideas and especially their attached values.

Cross-cultural researchers are said to believe that there is no such thing as a universal theory of management. In contrast, those with universal view were noted to have argued that culture does not limit the applicability of management theories and believe that there are similar management practices within organisations all around the world. Those with convergence perspective consider the degree of industrialisation as the main determinant for applicability of management theories (Hofstede,1993).

According to George (1968), it is noteworthy that a few of the western textbooks that discuss management history acknowledge the great pyramids in Egypt as illustrating early outstanding management activities in Africa. By extension, it is on record that the practice of management can be traced back thousands of years.

This is because the Egyptians applied the management functions of planning, organising and controlling when they constructed the pyramids. These great pyramids, which were built in 2900 B.C. are a classical example of management and co-ordination. It is interesting to note that one pyramid required 100,000 men, working for 20 years, covering 13 acres, using 2.3 million blocks, each weighing an average of 2.5 tons.

It is also noted that in ancient Ghana, there was the Empire of Ghana. The empire could not have survived without effective organisation and management. It should be noted, of course, that the modern state of Ghana is located far away from Ancient Ghana. In the East and North of Africa, there were great African civilisations.

All the above evidence suggests that the recognition of the need for effective management for achievement of organisational goals is a universal phenomenon. In the case of Africa, (with the exception of Egypt) African thoughts about management were never committed to writing. This, perhaps, has led to slow process of studying Africa’s own original conceptions of management (Ifechukwu, 1994).
It is clear from the above illustration that management ideas are universal but their level of development differs from one civilization to another. Who knows what would have happened in Africa if Western civilisation brought through colonialisation in Africa did not happen and Africa had the opportunity to develop her own peculiar ways of management? The position in Africa today could have been better or worse, who knows? The coming of the Europeans resulted in a permanent dislocation in the march to African civilisation (Ifechukwu, 1994).

Africans and indeed Nigerians gave serious thought to effective management for achieving organisational and state goals. As stated above, Nigerian culture like African culture stresses the following values: extended family or relationships, co-prosperity, respect for tradition, competition, hero-worship, consensus, age grade system (Ifechukwu, 1994).

The practice or application of these core values enjoys illustration among the major Nigerian tribal groups of Yoruba, Igbo and Hausa/Fulani. For instance, among the Yoruba of Nigeria, there was the Oyo Empire with the Alafin of Oyo as the head. There were other great kingdoms such as the Benin Kingdom. These could not have existed without effective organisations (Ifechukwu, 1994).

There was in existence an employer-employee relationship in Nigeria before the colonial era which was based on the predominantly agricultural economy, culture and traditions which were the basis for systems of work and reward. Iwuji (1968) also notes that slaves were hired to work in large farms and plantations as an integral part of the social and political systems in Nigeria during the pre-colonial period.

The employer / family determined the reward system. He also provided food, housing and security for all the employees and would determine when they would get married and to whom. This employment relations system was said to be in practice in the territories (the Northern Protectorate, the Southern Protectorate and the Lagos colony) that the British colonial masters joined together between 1906 and 1911 to become Nigeria before the colonisation of the territories.

With the reported colonisation of these territories, the British Voluntarists Employment Relations Practice(ERP) was introduced which could only survive through the introduction of monetary economy in form of payment of wages and salaries(George, et al.,2012).
This therefore clarifies that although there has been little documented history of the management principles in Africa it surely is very clear that the best management practices were being one which we as Africans need to reflect and implement those forgotten principles to create thriving economies.

6. The possibilities of knowledge production from Africa informing extant management and business knowledge

Given the emphasis placed on teamwork and collective knowledge in the current knowledge economy (Skyrme 2002), it is not surprising to witness some form of collaborative knowledge production among the selected countries in sub- Saharan Africa. However, it has been noted that knowledge production through collaborative research among the investigated countries is minimal. African countries contribute very little to each other’s knowledge production in terms of research articles.

With the exception of South Africa which contributed 11.7 and 10.7% towards the total research outputs of Zimbabwe and Botswana, respectively, sub-Saharan Africa countries contribute less than 10% of each other’s total research output. Essentially, therefore, this implies minimal contributions in knowledge production and sharing among the sub-Saharan African countries. On the pattern of collaborative knowledge production, it has emerged that countries engage in joint knowledge production based on their geographic proximity.

In that respect, countries in the Southern African Development Community (SADC), East African Community (EAC) and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) largely contribute and share knowledge with other countries in their regions. The extent and proportion of foreign countries’ knowledge production (and its impact) with sub-Saharan African countries was higher than continental knowledge production.

South Africa, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, and Botswana recorded relatively low growth rates in their collaboration with foreign countries, a situation that may imply little foreign dependence in the countries’ knowledge production activities.

The extent of knowledge sharing and exchange among scholars resident in the surveyed countries. Whereas it can be said that little knowledge exchange is taking place among African scholars, it seems that scholars based in foreign countries frequently share knowledge with their counterparts in sub-Saharan Africa.

Narvaez-Berthelemot et al. (2002, p. 239) explains that just as is the case with ‘‘other developing regions of the world, little scientific co-authorship is found between countries, preference being given to collaboration with industrialized nations’’. Dependence on industrialized nations for the development of theories in different fields could also account for the pattern of knowledge production has been witnessed.

With regard to research impact, which reflects the impact that knowledge production through research collaboration in sub-Saharan Africa has in the scientific arena, it has been found that citation impact of international collaboration is higher than that of continental collaboration. When assessed at face value, this means that research that is conducted in collaboration with scholars from foreign countries will have higher citation impact than that conducted among scholars resident in sub-Saharan Africa.

This conclusion may not be entirely true as citation impact is influenced by several factors, including language of publication, journals in which the research is published, and databases used for data extraction and analysis. Nevertheless, in order for research conducted in Africa to have international impact, factors such as those outlined above should be taken into consideration.

Finally, knowledge co-production in sub-Saharan Africa should be encouraged by way of student and staff exchanges; visits by scholars to institutions in other countries should be encouraged; subjects or topics of common research interest should be identified and explored for possible collaborative research; researcher networks should be encouraged in sub-Saharan Africa; regional conferences where scholars can network should be held more frequently; and funding for collaborative research should be prioritized.

7. Demystifying the myths about Africa
The formal analysis of an extensive corpus of cosmogonic myths attested in sub-Saharan Africa in historical times, suggests that much of their contents may be regarded as the elaboration and transformation of (combinations of) less than twenty different ‘Narrative Complexes’, each with its own specific minimum story line.

In the background, my approach is based on a number of assumptions that are highly contentious and whose critical testing, as well as the invitation to critical testing and subsequent improvement by others. These assumptions include:

Myth may be defined as ‘telling collectively managed stories about fundamental reality’
• Although AMH have, admittedly, an infinite capability for imaginative invention, hence – on the surface – a potentially infinite repertoire of myth, still that invention is constrained by a limited number of basic thought operations (e.g. distinction, juxtaposition, identity etc.)
• Each Narrative Complex encodes and facilitates one or more of these basic thought operations
• Although myth can be told in music, dance, spatial layouts etc., its typical (more recent?) form is language-based
• It is only partially true that myth expresses culture in language; rather, it is myth that constitutes language and culture in the first place (cf. Cassirer 1946, 1953f; Donald 1991).
• Therefore, myth may have been AMH’s principal claim to adaptive advantage
• The proposed aggregative diachronic approach to world mythology therefore amounts to the reconstruction of the sequence of emergence and transformation of Narrative Complexes in time and space (in reflection of AMH’s increasingly complex and diversified tool to articulate reality through myth), along the paths which AMH (according to the reconstructions by genetics and archaeology) appear to have taken since their emergence in Eastern and Southern Africa.
• Central myths (composed out of our Narrative Complexes) constitute the ideological/ cosmological knowledge component of any mode of production. Therefore it is specific modes of production, and specific changes therein, that power the demographic and mythological processes attending AMH before and after their exodus ‘Out-of-Africa’
Therefore Inevitably, modern researchers are AMH, and their chauvinism as such has persuaded some to think that any cultural exchange between Neanderthaloids and AMH, whatever its scope, could only have been a mere one-way process, with the apparently culturally deprived Neanderthaloids as sole beneficiaries.

Thus its evident that the story lines which have been told and re-told should now be stopped and empirical evidences produced through refined research be done in Africa to eliminate the myths .

8. Literature review
1) Bosman, P. W. (Ed.) (2007).Britz, J. J., Lor, P. J., Coetzee, I. E. M., & Bester, B. C. (2006). Africa as a knowledge society: A reality check (Vol. 38, pp. 25-40): Elsevier.
2) Chrisman, J. J., Chua, J. H., & Sharma, P. (2005). Trends and directions in the development of a strategic management theory of the family firm (Vol. 29, pp. 555-576): Wiley Online Library.
3) George, O. J., & Adediji, O. The Coming of ‘Industrial/Economic Democracy’to Nigeria from the United Kingdom.
4) Ghoshal, S. (2005). Bad Management Theories Are Destroying Good Management Practices (Vol. 4, pp. 75-91): Academy of Management.
5) Gladwin, T. N., Kennelly, J. J., & Krause, T.-S. (1995). Shifting paradigms for sustainable development: Implications for management theory and research (pp. 874-907): JSTOR.
6) Inyang, B. J. (2008). The challenges of evolving and developing management indigenous theories and practices in Africa (Vol. 3, pp. P122).
7) Kazanjian, R. K. (1988). Relation of dominant problems to stages of growth in technology-based new ventures (pp. 257-279): JSTOR.
8) Kroczek, A., van Stam, G., & Mweetwa, F. Stakeholder Theory and ICT in rural Macha, Zambia.
9) Mano, W. (2009). Re-conceptualizing media studies in Africa (pp. 277-293): Taylor & Francis.
10) Nkomo, S. M. (2006). Images of ‘African leadership and management’in organization studies: tensions, contradictions and revisions (Vol. 7).
11) Ogbo, A. I., Orga, C. C., & Ukpere, W. I. Motivation strategies for technical staff in Nigeria (Vol. 6, pp. 10464-10471).
12) Oghojafor, B. E. A., Idowu, M. A., & George, O. J. Application of Management Theories and Philosophies in Nigeria and Their Associated Problems.
13) Onyancha, O. B., & Maluleka, J. R. Knowledge production through collaborative research in sub-Saharan Africa: how much do countries contribute to each other’s knowledge output and citation impact? (Vol. 87, pp. 315-336): Akadémiai Kiadó, co-published with Springer Science+ Business Media BV, Formerly Kluwer Academic Publishers BV.
14) Onyancha, O. B., & Ocholla, D. N. (2009). Conceptualizing ‘knowledge management’in the context of Library and Information Science using the core/periphery model: University of Johannesburg.
15) Orlikowski, W. J., & Baroudi, J. J. (1991). Studying information technology in organizations: Research approaches and assumptions (Vol. 2, pp. 1-28): INFORMS.
16) Orts, E. W., & Strudler, A. (2009). Putting a stake in stakeholder theory (Vol. 88, pp. 605-615): Springer.
17) Pierce, M. B., & Kendrick, M. M. PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT: A CASE STUDY IN A STAKEHOLDER ECONOMY.
18) Reed, D. (1999). Stakeholder management theory: a critical theory perspective (pp. 453-483): JSTOR.
19) Reynolds, S. J., Schultz, F. C., & Hekman, D. R. (2006). Stakeholder theory and managerial decision-making: Constraints and implications of balancing stakeholder interests (Vol. 64, pp. 285-301): Springer.
20) Rubanju, A. C. G. (2007). Knowledge management technologies and organizational business processes: integration for business delivery performance in Sub Saharan Africa (pp. 198).
21) van Binsbergen, W. M. J. (Ed.) (2006) International Conference on Comparative Mythology, organized by Peking University (Research Institute of Sanskrit Manuscripts & Buddhist Literature) and the Mythology Project, Asia Center, Harvard University (Department of Sanskrit and Indian Studies).
22) Van der Laan, G., Van Ees, H., & Van Witteloostuijn, A. (2008). Corporate social and financial performance: An extended stakeholder theory, and empirical test with accounting measures (Vol. 79, pp. 299-310): Springer.